Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State heard me here at pre-Council statements last week, and I begged and pleaded with him that we go to Europe, raise our voice and have our voice heard as a neutral country. We are a small country that has punched way above our size and our strength by being peaceful and neutral. Our neutrality has stood to us well. I mentioned our peacekeepers back in the Congo and I also mentioned Jadotville. I appeal again to the Minister of State to give the Government's recognition to the men and women with regard to that fight in Jadotville, and give them the respect they deserve.

In this case here, we are making all the noise about what is going on in Ukraine. We hitched our wagon to it completely. I heard the Tánaiste this morning on radio saying we were not politically neutral. He said that we are militarily neutral but not politically neutral and that, in his words, we opposed the aggression by Russia. I do not accept that. We are supposed to be fully neutral. We have diluted ourselves with some of the comments that have been made here.

I condemned out of hand the Hamas savagery, but I equally condemn the savagery and the overkill now by Israel. However, we need to be peacekeepers out there and in Europe.

On the other issue of the whole influx of refugees and migrants and everything else, how come Poland and Hungary can stop and close their borders and we will not even look at that? We are giving out messages that we are open for anybody to come from all over the world, ar fud an domhain. It is time that we took a leaf out of Hungary's book and, indeed, Poland's, and decided that our own destiny and our own people must come first. We are all for cheering and welcoming people but when we are at capacity, we must stop the nonsense.

We have a huge issue at the moment in Cashel in County Tipperary. There are going to be Cashel's all over the country because we have undocumented people coming in and being forced on communities with no consultation, no engagement with people and no proper examination of the facilities, whereas large multi-million euro companies are buying up old buildings and putting people into terrible conditions and awful kinds of situations. That is not good enough. We must respect our tricolour and our peaceful role in Europe and be the peacekeepers to try to get peace in these countries that are at war and not back one side or the other.

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